A Year in the South (20 page)

Her real aim had been to punish Matilda, whom she particularly hated. When the twins were born, late in 1859 at the Memphis property, Boss had tried to lighten Matilda's burden by giving Lou time off to help her in the kitchen. But Madam would not hear of it. She made excuses to keep Lou occupied with errands and watched closely to see that Matilda did not slack off on her duties, which included washing and ironing the McGehees' clothes as well as preparing their meals and doing the dishes. It was all Matilda could do to slip away and nurse the babies at intervals during the day. “My heart was sore and heavy,” Lou recalled, “for my wife was almost run to death with work. The children grew puny and sickly for want of proper care.” A doctor confirmed this diagnosis and recommended that Matilda be allowed some rest, but Madam was relentless. Exhausted and desperate, Matilda finally packed up the babies, fled the mansion, made her way to a Memphis slave market, and told the proprietor she wanted to be sold. When Boss was notified, he came in his carriage to fetch her home. As they drove up to the mansion, Madam came running out, shouting at Matilda, “Ah!… you put up at the wrong hotel.” She then took Matilda to the barn, tied her to a joist, and beat her. Afterward, she sent her back to work. The babies died six months later.
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Lou had hated Madam for a long time before this episode, and he continued to do so after. But he could never bring himself to hate Boss in the same way. In his younger days he had been quite in awe of Boss and had done all he could to please him. He thought him brilliant and distinguished, a man of patience, generosity, and humanity. He loved the way Boss would take him in hand and carefully instruct him in medicine and other skills. He saw what joy Boss took in giving little gifts to his “people,” like the red-and-yellow checked gingham he brought back from a business trip for the slave women, who cried with delight and fashioned the cloth into fancy turbans. He was touched when he learned that Boss wrote occasional letters to the mother of a slave boy he had bought in Virginia, addressed to her owner, so that she might have news of the son she had been separated from.
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But there were times when Boss revealed his ignoble side. He was, for one thing, appallingly hot-headed. On one occasion at the Pontotoc place, Lou had watched in horror as Boss armed himself with a double-barreled shotgun and prepared to kill one of his neighbors over a silly property dispute. And, for all Boss's paternalism and kindness, he often unleashed his fury on his slaves. “[A]lways there was slashing and whipping” going on at Boss's place, Lou remembered. Generally the overseer dealt out the prescribed punishments, but if Boss lost his temper or felt especially aggrieved, he wielded the whip himself. Lou saw him do so many times. One of his victims was Matilda. He assisted in Madam's thrashing of her in the barn; and on another occasion, after Madam complained about her, he became so enraged that he grabbed Matilda and choked her.
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Lou was not exempt from such treatment. He learned early on how quickly Boss could turn from patient mentor to brutal disciplinarian. His memory of one occasion in the 1850s, after his second escape attempt, was still vivid four decades later:

I was taken to the barn where stocks had been prepared, beside which were a cowhide and a pail of salt water, all prepared for me.… I was fastened in the stocks, my clothing removed, and the whipping began. Boss whipped me a while, then he sat down and read his paper, after which the whipping was resumed. This continued for two hours. Fastened as I was in the stocks, I could only stand and take lash after lash, as long as he desired, the terrible rawhide cutting into my flesh at every stroke. Then he used peach tree switches, which cracked the flesh so the blood oozed out. After this came the paddle, two and a half feet long and three inches wide. Salt and water was at once applied to wash the wounds, and the smarting was maddening.… I could hardly move after the terrible ordeal was finished, and could scarcely bear my clothes to touch me at first, so sore was my whole body.
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Punishments such as this whetted Lou's desire for freedom. So did the outbreak of war, the Yankee invasion, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Reports of these events circulated among the Confederacy's slaves despite the efforts of Southern whites to keep the slaves uninformed. Lou himself picked up a lot of news by eavesdropping on the McGehee family's conversations, and he shared it eagerly with his fellow servants. He remembered listening on one occasion while Master Jack cursed the Confederate president for bungling the war effort: “What is Jeff Davis doin'-doin'?… [He] is a grand rascal-rascal.” Among themselves, the slaves whispered about such stories, and as Confederate defeat became more certain, they made up songs to celebrate their coming freedom. Lou recalled one that Kitty sang:

There'll be no more talk about Monday, by and by,

But every day will be Sunday, by and by.

Always, however, the slaves had to take care to hide their feelings from the whites. One time Kitty was careless: Malinda McGehee overheard her singing in the kitchen and interrupted her sharply: “Don't think you are going to be free; you darkies were made by God and ordained to wait upon us.”
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Even as the war raised hopes and opened new opportunities for seekers of freedom, however, it posed new dangers. Lou had learned of these dangers firsthand during his two wartime escape attempts. For one thing, Confederate army patrols were about, and they had orders to keep an eye not only on the Yankees but also on the slaves. Lou had blundered into one of these as he fled Master Jack's plantation just after Christmas of 1862, heading for a rumored Union army force at Holly Springs. The rebel soldiers held him long enough to ascertain from where he had escaped, then whipped him with dogwood switches, dragged him back to Master Jack's, and whipped him again in the presence of Madam.
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His next attempt, a few weeks later, had pointed up another danger: the increased vigilance of the white citizenry. On this occasion, Lou, Matilda, and three others set out from Master Jack's with the hope of reaching Memphis. They took every precaution, traveling at night only, staying off the roads, carefully skirting farmhouses. After two nights of stumbling through fields and woods and thickets and swamps, they had made about fifteen miles and were congratulating themselves on their success when they heard bloodhounds yelping and men shouting. The five scattered, but it was no use. The party of pursuers—which consisted of two McGehee relatives, a hired tracker known as “Williams the nigger-catcher,” and his fourteen dogs—rounded up all the fugitives. When Lou descended from the persimmon tree in which he had taken refuge, the dogs ripped his flesh, Williams urging them on. The five were marched back to Panola by their captors, stopping overnight at a farmhouse where an old white woman taunted them: “You niggers going to the Yankees? You all ought to be killed.” Once they were back at Master Jack's, Lou recalled, “All of us were whipped. All the members of the family were very angry. Old Lady Jack McG[eh]ee was so enraged that she said to my wife: ‘I thought you were a Christian. You'll never see your God.'”
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Panola County had never been an easy place for slaves to escape from. In the Old South, the racial fears of whites were greatest where slaves were most numerous, and in Panola County there were many slaves: they constituted six-tenths of the county's population in 1860. As a result, whites in Panola strove to maintain the mechanisms of control that in many other Southern communities had been relaxed. Patrols rode regularly at night to watch for suspicious activity; slaves were required to have a written pass to travel beyond their home. Whites were especially watchful in the district around the village of Como, where Master Jack's plantation was located. In this district the county's biggest plantations were concentrated, and whites were outnumbered by blacks five to one.
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With the war came not only increased vigilance on the part of whites in Panola, but also increased brutality. Lou knew of three slaves who were killed while trying to escape. One was a slave of Boss who was being held at Master Jack's after Boss evacuated the Bolivar plantation. He slipped away and got a few miles from the plantation before being overtaken by Master Jack's son William, a Confederate soldier who happened to be home at the time. Instead of bringing the man back, William shot him dead.
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Lou got that story secondhand, but he was an eyewitness to another episode. Two slaves belonging to a neighbor of Master Jack, a man named Wallace, were caught running away and were returned to their master. Wallace decided to do the community a favor by making an example of them. He had the two hanged and notified his neighbors. Lou tells the rest of the story: “All of our servants were called up, told every detail … and then compelled to go and see them where they hung. I never shall forget the horror of the scene—it was sickening. The bodies hung at the roadside … until the blue flies literally swarmed around them, and the stench was fearful.”
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Escape was not impossible. A number of Panola County slaves made it to freedom during the war, either by managing to elude their pursuers all the way to the Union lines or by going off with one of the Yankee raiding parties that periodically came through the county. But, as Lou had learned, evading determined pursuers for any great distance was very difficult; and, as he learned on another occasion, Yankee raids did not always offer an opportunity to escape.
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Lou had come face to face with Union troops at Master Jack's plantation in early 1863. One night he was awakened by a rumbling sound coming from the road, like the noise of heavy wagons. Cautiously he crept from his cabin and saw federal artillery passing and some soldiers at the creek. He remained hidden, however, fearing that if he approached the soldiers, they might get startled and open fire. After the troops moved on, Lou returned to the quarters, told Matilda and George what he had seen, and suggested that this might be a good time to flee. But George, who was older than Lou, advised him not to be hasty; they needed time to prepare.
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Early the next morning Lou set out on an errand, mounted on one of Master Jack's good horses. He was carrying a package and some letters that he was to mail at the Como post office. As he dismounted to open the gate, he was accosted by a Union officer on horseback leading a column of soldiers down the road. If Lou had ever fantasized about a warm reception and instant freedom upon meeting the Yankee invaders, that fantasy was now dashed. The officer seemed interested only in Lou's horse. He forced Lou to exchange mounts, leaving Lou with a very sorry nag, and then confiscated the package and letters and rode away with his men behind him.
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Lou returned to his cabin, sick with anticipation of the punishment he was sure to get for losing the horse and mail. Perhaps he might have gone off with these Yankees. But they had in no way encouraged him; and what if he had tried and they had rejected him, or had taken him along but then abandoned him, and the McGehees found out about it? And even if he got away, what about Matilda? A half hour later, another detachment of Yankees appeared and entered the grounds of the plantation. One old slave shouted, “My Lord! de year of jubilee am come.” But Lou did not even think about escape. He just went to the Big House, reported that Yankees were pillaging the dairy, and broke the bad news about the horse and mail.
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It would have been different had there been a permanent Union occupation force in or near Panola. Wherever such garrisons were posted in the South, slavery disintegrated. Yankee raiding parties might be reluctant to burden themselves with black runaways, but the army post commanders were under orders to take in all who came and to see to it that the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced as far as their authority could reach.
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Federal authority did not reach Panola County, even as late as the spring of 1865. There were not even any raids through the county that spring. Thus the mechanisms of racial control could remain in force. As long as there were men around who had guns and were committed to preserving slavery, it would endure—until the arrival of other men with guns who were committed to ending it.

There were not as many men with guns in Panola in the spring of 1865 as there once had been, for the demands of war had taken many away. Still, there were enough. Master Jack may have been too feeble to wield a weapon, but he knew that all he had to do in an emergency was raise the alarm and armed white men would be at his side, their bloodhounds yelping. And the blacks on his plantation knew it, too.
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By the early part of May enough news had reached Panola to make it clear that the Confederacy had collapsed and the war was over. Federal occupation forces began to move into the interior of Mississippi. By May 13 there was a garrison at Grenada, about fifty miles south of Master Jack's. Army authorities issued proclamations warning the citizens of the state that resistance must cease and slaves must be freed. As word of these orders filtered into Panola County, some slave owners released their hold.
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Others did not, especially in the Como district. Master Jack, for one, was determined to preserve his little world as long as he could. He decreed that none of his blacks would be allowed off the plantation for any reason, except Lou and George on the Sunday morning church excursions. His word still carried authority. In addition to whatever neighbors he could call on, he now had the assistance of his son William, recently returned from the Confederate army and as ready as ever to gun down any black fugitive he caught.
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Lou, George, and Kitty spoke to one another often in those last days of May about the possibility of escape. They did not do so in the presence of Matilda, who had been so traumatized by her failed attempt in 1863 that she would not consent to another. The three knew that the war was over but had no idea when Union troops might actually be on hand to enforce their freedom. The garrison at Grenada was too distant to be of help. The nearest Yankee force, as far as they knew, was at Memphis, forty miles away.
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